(Western Journal) An exceptionally insightful opinion piece in the New York Post written by a teacher and senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute, Daniel Buck, explains why he stopped using his students’ preferred pronouns.
“I used to use my middle-school students’ preferred pronouns,” Buck wrote. “It seemed polite. The largest teachers union in the nation encourages it. What harm could it do?”
“I can no longer abide by such a lie.”
Buck went on to explain the internal reasoning that led him to change his mind about using a child’s preferred pronouns.
One by one, Buck shredded the leftist arguments we have heard over and over as justification for expecting teachers to comply.
For example, leftists argue that referring to a child by his or her preferred pronoun is the kind and loving thing to do.
To which Buck responded, “I have had students with anorexia who, despite their gaunt frame, believed they were fat. I had one student who heard voices and wrote letters to ‘imaginary friends’ who instructed her to hurt herself. Would it be caring, loving or humanitarian to indulge such delusions?”
This person uses vir/vamp pronouns because she sometimes feels vampy pic.twitter.com/96SHv6YPAR
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 7, 2023
The answer is clearly no.
Children have active imaginations, and most will, at some point or the other, invent an imaginary friend or a fantasy life where they can be whatever they dream — a princess or a cowboy, or a prehistoric dinosaur. But the role of the adult is to help children differentiate between imaginary play, which is beneficial, and reality. This means they can run around the house in their green pajamas roaring like a T-Rex during playtime, but they still need to eat their veggies at dinner, and if they bite grandpa, there will be a time out.
Allowing children to slip permanently into their imaginary identity would, as Buck called it, “facilitate a deterioration of mental wellbeing.”
Buck said he realized that facilitating these delusions is actually cruelty masquerading as kindness.
He pointed out the cruelty of mutilating young bodies when “80% of children with gender dysphoria grow out of it.”
Woman who ‘detransitioned’ after taking puberty blockers says ‘there’s no such thing as being born in wrong body’
🖥 GB News on YouTube https://t.co/KHMl3BS8eChttps://t.co/kiAg8wxmX2
— GB News (@GBNEWS) May 18, 2022
He pointed out the cruelty of allowing men dressed as women to dominate in women’s sports.
He pointed out the cruelty of offering “anxious, depressed and distraught teenagers the prospects of transition as an easy solution — a metaphorical pill with permanent side effects.
